Mt. Pleasant Faces Legal and Financial Hurdles In Voting Rights Case

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The Mt. Pleasant Town Council in session last year

December 2, 2025

By Barrett Seaman–

The New York State Court of Appeals ruling on November 20 that the Town of Newburgh could not challenge the constitutionality of the state’s three-year-old voting rights law was good news for a group of minority voters 45 miles down the Hudson in Sleepy Hollow.

Two years ago, five Hispanic plaintiffs in Sleepy Hollow sued the Town of Mt. Pleasant, charging that the Town’s “at large” voting system violated the John R. Lewis New York Voting Rights Act(NYVRA) by denying Sleepy Hollow’s Hispanic population the ability to elect its preferred candidates to the Town Board. Like the minority plaintiffs in Newburgh, the plaintiffs in Sleepy Hollow argue that throwing all of the Township’s voters into a single pool dilutes the voting power of minorities who tend to be concentrated in specific districts.

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In Sleepy Hollow, with fewer than 5,000 registered voters, Hispanics comprise roughly half the village’s total population but less than 10% of the nearly 30,000 voters in the Town as a whole. The village is one of seven distinct communities within the town. Expert testimony requested by the Town Council confirmed that under the at-large voting system, none of the candidates favored by Sleepy Hollow voters have ever won in town-wide elections.

Newburgh accelerated the legal process by going straight to the state’s highest court where they challenged the constitutionality of the NYVRA. Sleepy Hollow’s case, Serratto vs. Town of Mt. Pleasant, is before the State Supreme Court, two levels below. But the unanimous decision in the Newburgh case does not bode well for the defendants, the governing Town Council, which has so far refused to consider alternative voting methods, such as creating wards that would allow each of the seven individual communities, including Sleepy Hollow, to elect their own council member.

The plaintiffs in both these cases are represented by David Imamura of the law firm of Abrams Fensterman LLP with assistance from the Election Law Clinic at Harvard Law School. “This is a critical win for voting rights in New York,” Imamura said of the Newburgh decision. “At a time when states across the country are weakening safeguards against vote dilution, New York’s highest court has decisively rejected a baseless effort to undermine a law that protects every voter’s equal access to the democratic process.”

Backed by strong public resistance voiced at its hearings, Mt. Pleasant’s Republican-dominated Town Council not only voted unanimously to fight the suit but also hired the national law firm BakerHostetler to defend its position. With hourly rates ranging into four figures, the firm’s lawyers have so far cost the Town nearly $1.5 million and climbing. Newburgh has reportedly spent more than $2 million to date.

The saga continues on Tuesday, December 2^nd before New York State Supreme Court Justice David F. Everett, who is expected to respond to an earlier challenge to a ruling he made last spring. Tuesday may also produce a trial date sometime in 2026, guaranteeing that the case (along with BakerHostetler’s accumulating attorneys’ fees) will go on. Alternatively, Mt. Pleasant might reconsider its refusal to explore other voting models. Clearly promoting that outcome, Imamura said “We hope we can get Newburgh and Mt. Pleasant to stop spending millions of taxpayer dollars just to keep people from voting.”

Responding to an inquiry by The Hudson Independent, Mt. Pleasant’s Town Attorney replied: “The Town is reviewing the recent Court of Appeals decision and is considering all options.”

Update: On Tuesday, the Council met in executive session to discuss “litigation matters” but did not share any substance from those discussions. In court that day, Judge Everett set a trial date of March 2nd.

For further background on this story, see the following:

https://thehudsonindependent.com/mt-pleasant-grapples-with-sleepy-hollow-voting-rights-charge/

https://thehudsonindependent.com/mt-pleasant-hires-national-law-firm-to-fight-allegations-by-sleepy-hollow-hispanics-that-the-town-is-violating-the-voting-rights-act/

https://thehudsonindependent.com/mt-pleasant-pays-300000-to-law-firm-to-cover-four-months-work-on-sleepy-hollow-voting-rights-case/

https://thehudsonindependent.com/mt-pleasants-fight-to-stave-off-sleepy-hollow-voting-rights-challenge-is-proving-costly/

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